Hawaii Commercial Landlord Representation

Brokerage: Landlord Representation

Our brokerage teams who work on behalf of property owners and landlords do more than searching and signing tenants. They create the strategic backbone of a property marketing cycle that positions the property in the marketplace and secures the right tenants, building value to support the landlord’s ownership goals.

These are six key aspects we consider when representing landlords and owners:

1. Know your competitive set. When a broker is actively marketing your property, how do you know how well they’re performing? Most owners don’t know, because they don’t have a frame of reference.

We demonstrate our accountability by defining a “competitive set,” typically five to ten buildings in the marketplace with similar amenities, geographic locations and target rental rates. From our first meetings through our regular status reports, we can compare your building’s leasing performance with these competitors to consistently evaluate our strategies and success.

2. Positioning matters. Many commercial buildings have become commodities—too alike, and therefore potential tenants make choices based on price. We seek to elevate your building’s stature within its competitive set by defining and cultivating the amenities it offers that are unlike any other.

Strategies range from improving tenant relations to identifying unusual building attributes to hosting special programs such as art exhibits or flu shot clinics.

For example, we noted that one owner’s building had five ingress/egress points from its parking structure, while the other buildings in its competitive set had only two or three.

As a result, our brokerage professionals targeted sales organizations and other businesses with a high in-and-out requirement on their professionals and employees. The building owner was able to achieve stronger rents than the competitive set based on this key attribute—which wasn’t even noted on the original building spec sheet.

3. Never miss a prospect. In a perfect marketplace, every potential tenant who is qualified to lease your space would be aware of it. Technology advances bring us closer to this, giving all tenants greater transparency and access to information about available space.
However, there is a substantial gap in what we call the “transaction filter,” which is the process of moving a prospect from mere awareness to understanding of how the space might suit them, to interacting with the space and finally choosing to lease it.

This is our sweet spot.

Anyone can broadcast a message—“Space Available!”—but not anyone can bridge the gap between what a tenant thinks they need and the potential for your space to fill the bill.

Our marketing approach segments potential tenants, focusing first on those likely to pay the highest price and create the least risk. This strategy directs our resources to drive top prospects through the transaction filter, ensuring that they fully understand the building’s benefits and unique attributes.

From property tours to test-fit space planning to lease negotiations, we create a continuous feedback loop that helps us consistently raise the bar in our marketing efforts.

For example, in one building we created a feedback incentive program, gathering both the prospect tenant’s thoughts and their broker’s thoughts on our clients’ building. Their comments spurred the owner to make several low-cost improvements to the property that ultimately attracted tenants from an industry not previously targeted.

4. Mix well. Form into clusters. The relationships among tenants in a building are proven to add asset value over time by reducing turnover rates. We foster tenant collaboration and support our leasing efforts by showcasing the benefits of not only the building, but of adjacent tenants and services.

Complementary businesses thrive off each other’s successes, and our objective is to search out the best tenant mix or build an industry cluster that will make your building known for more than just its bricks and mortar.

5. Minimize risk. We start many engagements with our lease auditing teams, who carefully comb through leases to ensure all reimbursable expenses are properly billed and captured, all leasable space is fully utilized, and lease abstracts clearly define both the owner’s and tenants’ obligations.

We also help you target and qualify tenants based on your tolerance for risk by factoring in credit rating, market dynamics and business history. Ultimately, we structure a lease with the right security measures to protect your investment.

6. Today’s lease has a ripple effect on tomorrow’s investment. We collaborate to plan your long-term leasing objectives to minimize exposure due to lease expirations, reduce turnover through blending and extending existing tenants, and plan for significant capital improvements.

Your investment strategy is also considered, whether your property is a long-term hold, likely to be renovated, or will be positioned for sale in the next few years. As we understand the big picture of your ownership strategy, we can help craft lease terms and choose tenants that are best suited to support these objectives.